Mrs. Polllifax and the Second Thief Read online

  "Kate," he said, "listen to me. I'm fifteen years older than you, I'm forty-one, I've lived a rather rum life and done a lot of rum things and you deserve better.

  "Really? Then can you tell me where on earth I'll find someone exactly like you but fifteen years younger? Of course you're being gallant, I see that now," she added deliberately. "I have an aunt who may be arrested tomorrow—any day or year—and could be visited only in a prison, which would be enormously embarrassing for you."

  Farrell laughed. "Deliver me from a clever woman! You know very well—"

  "What I know very well is that what is between us is good. I love you, damn it, and you said you loved me, too, and I'd appreciate being asked my thoughts on the matter, not told it wouldn't work. You're scared, Farrell, admit it. Scared of commitment."

  "I'm only thinking of you," protested Farrell.

  "You're not thinking of me at all," she told him indignantly.

  "Kate—stay away from me," Farrell said warningly. "You're not thinking of this sensibly and rationally, and—"

  Another silence followed. Obviously Kate had moved into his arms, thought Mrs. Pollifax contentedly, and she left her chair to stroll over and examine the purple buds on the comfrey. A few minutes later, hearing Igeia's voice in the kitchen, she walked back into the house, hoping not only to learn the outcome of this rocky romance but also hoping for some breakfast.

  She found Kate radiant; seeing her she said, "Mrs. Pollifax, I've another two weeks of leave and I'm going back with Farrell to Mexico City! To see his art gallery, and—"

  "—and sort out possibilities," Farrell added, and with an impish grin he said, "Well, Duchess? She refuses to listen to reason, you know."

  "I'm surprised you thought she would," said Mrs. Pollifax. "I'm delighted."

  "Of course," added Farrell, "you realize that she really wants to research my gallery as an outlet for her aunt's forgeries."

  "Presumptuous man," said Kate. "Let's go and tell Franca, she'll be surprised."

  Mrs. Pollifax doubted this very much.

  Half an hour later, standing on the hill overlooking the village, Mrs. Pollifax saw Franca approaching and greeted her. "I've been enjoying the silence after last night's noisy interlude. Kate and Farrell have told you their news?"

  Franca smiled. "Yes, and I fervently hope she'll find the art gallery stimulating and fun. I love her dearly and I've worried about her doing the work she's chosen. I think Farrell's very right for her, too."

  "You weren't surprised, then."

  Franca laughed. "He was so very cross when he arrived here, and Kate so very angry at him—quite unlike her!—that it made me suspicious at once."

  "How perceptive! But Franca," she said, examining her with some surprise, "you're wearing your own hair today. No wig?"

  She said vaguely, "Oh, that .., no .., so much has been happening . . ."

  "So Mr. Vica was right, then, about the boredom? I hear he's coming back this afternoon."

  Franca did not answer, she was staring down at the houses and the fields below, and from the expression on her face Mrs. Pollifax guessed that she was thinking of something very different. "There's so much of my history here," she said with a sigh. "So many years!"

  At once Mrs. Pollifax understood what lay behind this retreat into the past. She said gently, "Tell me."

  Franca hesitated and when she spoke again her voice held a somber, dreamy quality. "It's just that I've been remembering so much . . , how it all began—each family drawing lots for their four-acre parcels—and how that didn't work because, as you can imagine, the distance to some of the gardens was too far from the gates and the village, and the gardens farthest from the wells didn't prosper, which led to bad feeling . . ."

  "How was that solved?" asked Mrs. Pollifax, curious.

  "By blackmail, really," Franca said ruefully. "The greatest draw was promising a tractor—and the hope of a reservoir for water—and so the vote was finally to share all of the land. Food on the table is a great persuader," she added with a smile. "Also the fact that if the cooperative should ever fail they would still own their original four acres since the deeds are properly registered."

  "I don't know how you found time to paint your canvasses!"

  "Well," admitted Franca with a smile, "that is exactly why each canvas I painted had to eventually be so extremely remunerative . . . There was Nito, for instance, so bright a boy I feared we might lose him to the—the people one would not wish to lose him to in Sicily . . . With my second painting he was sent off to college. With the next one—nameless," she said quickly, "we bought the larger generator, and the tractor, and when Nito came home married to a schoolteacher we began the school . . , and by then the crops were doing so well, the earth rich at last, the men had time to dig at night under the house, and from selling a few of the artifacts that we excavated—stealthily, of course—we installed cisterns and the water systems." She sighed. "But it is no longer quite so exciting now, I admit."

  "You mean you've been working yourself out of a job," Mrs. Pollifax told her sympathetically.

  Franca's smile was rueful. "I have been a parent to the village, you understand? And there comes a time when a good parent lets go—yet it's been such a wonderful fifteen years for me." She turned to look at Mrs. Pollifax searchingly. "Do you think I can change at my age? Live a different life?"

  And now we arrive at the nub of the matter, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and aloud she said, "We are speaking here of Ambrose Vica, I think. Who returns this afternoon, I hear?"

  Franca nodded. "So he told Farrell last night when he left with your assassin." She said carefully, "It is true that he startled me—was it only last night? I had thought him only an idle man of no purpose. Always I have found him kind—but until last night I didn't realize how kind, I didn't know that it was he who bought the Matisse and the Braque to—to protect me. I have liked him, he has been honest and frank with me in his dealings, and I have seen his loneliness. But to be so rich—"

  "You're afraid of ease?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "I admit this, yes," Franca said, nodding.

  "But haven't you earned it?"

  Franca shrugged. "One acquires habits," she said wryly. "The habit of being useful."

  "That I can understand," Mrs. Pollifax told her, and added mischievously, "But think of how creatively you could encourage him to use his great fortune!"

  Franca looked amused. "I'd not thought of that. He has power, that man! It would be—interesting, yes. But why do you think he wants to marry me?"

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed. "Because you're both—well, I would say that both of you are outlaws in your different and unusual ways. You're his equal, Franca."

  "Not in fortune."

  "True," said Mrs. Pollifax, "but I can tell you that for myself, Franca, I also esteem and admire you. I can't judge you. I'm married to a man I love very much who upholds the law— he's a retired judge—and I've come to realize today that I dare not tell him about your Correggio and your other forgeries, and this will be the first secret that I've ever kept from him."

  Franca said with interest, "He would arrest me, do you think?"

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head. "Oh no, but it would make him terribly uncomfortable, it would be a confidence that would burden him. It will have to remain my knowledge, my secret. It must."

  "If that is true," Franca said gravely, "it is a great gift that you're giving me. Your silence."

  "Possibly as a wedding gift?" said Mrs. Pollifax with a twinkle.

  Franca laughed. "About that we will see. You give me good reasons to say yes to Ambrose, I think he comes to speak of this again today so I will think hard of what you said."

  Mrs. Pollifax smiled. "Then I'll leave you to your thoughts and wish you good ones."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Pollifax, or—Emily?"

  "Emily's much better, yes," she told her, and left her to her reflections.

  When they returned after lunch from the airport, with reservat
ions for the morning flight to New York, there was a brown Fiat parked by the house. "That looks familiar," said Farrell. "It's Vica's car, the one I had to abandon in Erice."

  As Kate drew up next to it, Mr. Vica walked out of the house looking dazed; glimpsing them he only nodded, climbed into his car and headed for the gates.

  She's refused him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, and hurried ahead into the kitchen, wondering if she would find Franca melancholy or relieved. Instead Franca was seated at the table staring into space, and she looked as dazed as Mr. Vica had looked.

  "Franca, we're back," she told her. "Ambrose Vica was here?"

  Franca emerged from her trance with a curious smile tugging at her lips. "I said yes to him, Emily . . . We're going to be married in Paris. Next week—before I change my mind, he says."

  Mrs. Pollifax chuckled; it was no wonder that Mr. Vica had looked dazed. "And you—are you happy about it?"

  Franca regarded her thoughtfully. "It surprises me, but yes, I think I feel very happy about it. I will of course have to wear shoes," she said gravely, "but otherwise Ambrose says he does not wish me to change in the slightest way." She suddenly laughed. "He says I must even bring my wigs, that in Paris—if I wish—I may set a new style. I, set a new style!"

  "I think I like this Ambrose Vica very much," said Mrs. Pollifax warmly, and mentally apologized to him for thinking he looked like a thug. Already in her mind a picture was forming of Franca in Paris, in New York, Rome, the Riviera, of people murmuring, "Look, there's that wonderfully eccentric Mrs. Vica—not a beauty for a change—but such an origina].

  She liked that picture.

  She liked equally well the thought that in forty-eight hours she would see Cyrus again. There would be so very much to tell him—but not everything, she remembered—at least not quite everything.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, BACK FROM CHICAGO FOR her birthday, Mrs. Pollifax received two interesting and unexpected messages. A cable from Mexico City was delivered while she and Cyrus were lingering over morning coffee. The cable read: sorry to report my charm failed me

  DUCHESS STOP KATE RETURNED TO WORK YESTERDAY BUT LEFT A SUITCASE FULL OF CLOTHES STOP QUERY IS THIS HOPEFUL STOP COME VISIT SOON AND CONSOLE ME YOU TWO STOP LOVE AND KISSES FARRELL.

  "Doesn't sound too wounded," said Cyrus when she read it to him. "May even be relieved."

  "One can never really tell," she said thoughtfully, reading over the words again.

  "Neither of them were ready for this, I think, which is why they were both so angered—even hostile—about the attraction."

  "Timing bad?" suggested Cyrus.

  She nodded. "It probably couldn't be worse. You have Kate, very ambitious, younger, and finally doing the work she's always wanted, and then you have Farrell, who has tired of that same work and has left it to settle down and enjoy his gallery." She smiled. "But the suitcase left behind is intriguing."

  "Agreed," said Cyrus. "I like Farrell ... A return cable with our sympathy, perhaps?"

  "Definitely," she said, and had just completed sending it when the morning mail arrived, bearing a postcard with a picture of the Eiffel Tower.

  "It's from Franca!" she exclaimed, and Cyrus put down his cup of coffee and waited.

  Dear Emily, wrote Franca, Paris has been wonderful. Not only are

  we buying works of promising (and starving!) artists but Ambrose is in

  touch with the United Nations about building and supporting a center

  for Balkan orphans and refugees. You are an even better witch than

  Norina, dear Mrs. P. . . . love, Franca.

  "A cup-runneth-over moment," she told Cyrus, handing the Paris card to him across the breakfast table.

  Cyrus read it and said, "You were in Sicily less than a week —and this happened, too?"

  Mrs. Pollifax said modestly, "It was a very accelerated week."

  "And next," he said dryly, "we can expect a card from Aristotle telling us what a wonderful time he's having and wishing we were with him?"

  Mrs. Pollifax laughed, and Cyrus returned to his newspaper but as he turned a page he added, "Only wish I could have seen some of Franca's work—rather odd nobody seems to have heard of her. Must have been outstanding to have supported an entire village as it did."

  "It was outstanding, yes, but I'm not sure that it would have been quite to your taste," she told him truthfully, and felt that she had navigated her last shoal.

  Until her birthday, that is, when Cyrus carried her off to New York City to celebrate it with a long weekend of theater, art exhibits, moviegoing and the luxury of not cooking a single meal. She found it extremely restful, except for one moment during the weekend when they visited the Metropolitan Museum, and the guide, sharing information with them, pointed to an alcove in which a single painting was displayed.

  "That's the Frans Hals in there," he said. "Hung it just last week. Spent four years arguing whether it's authentic or fake but they settled it at last. You might want to take a look, it's quite a find."

  "Frans Hals," she repeated, and suddenly she was remembering Farrell saying, That Dutch painting Jour years ago, Franca— a Frans Hals, wasn't it? The experts are still arguing over it, some calling it genuine, others a forgery. Dare 1 ask—?

  And Franca confiding, / always place a very tiny dot in one corner of each painting so that I'll recognize it in a museum.

  I don't want to look, thought Mrs. Pollifax, / don't want to know. "If you don't mind, Cyrus, I'd rather not," she said. "We've seen so much that I'm experiencing overload, and isn't it nearly time for lunch? I'm famished."

  Cyrus gave her an amused glance. "Amazing how many paintings are being forged these days, isn't it?" With a faint smile—as if he knew exactly why she preferred not to see the painting—he said, "Then of course we'll forego the Frans Hals and have lunch, my dear."

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